Re: [CH]Compost, Evilagro Greenfield War
GarryMass@aol.com
Thu, 23 Mar 2000 12:09:17 EST
In a message dated 3/00 8:23:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, begg.4@osu.edu
writes:
<< When you have an
understanding of what it takes to grow plants... >>
There's ample advice on ChileHead links of all kinds, there's good stuff at
the Tough-Love.com site, (remember to put in the hyphen or you'll wind up at
a grief site) and more at Uncle Steve's
(http://ushotstuff.com/Growing.Tips.htm).
And adding about three inches of compost and digging it in is fairly standard
advice. But opting for compost only and continuing the Evilagro Greenfield
War by denouncing petrochemical fertilizers is generally unhelpful. At the
ion exchange level, I don't think that a plant has any idea whether NPK and
other nutrients are coming from new compost or from the oldest compost on
earth - oil. It's like abortion in that one side will never be won over by
the other. Those that will have them will do so no matter what the law says,
and those that won't, won't. The more neutral ground, seems to me to be the
judicious (and scant) use of commercial fertilizers by those who would use
them, and super composting (advocated by the other camp) as well.
While I'm taking the names of concepts in vain, note that the
grower/producers on this list (the esteemed firefighter, for one) who use
petrochemicals do so pre- planting and very little afterward. Lord Byron
essentially starves his Chiles after boosting them ever so slightly with low
nitrogen commercial fertilizer, a practice which lands him (and me) squarely
in the neutral zone. Pardoning the annual MiracleGro controversy, the use of
scant feedings of dilute amounts seems to me to make the whole topic moot.
Finally, my recall of composting by the acre is that approx. 200,000 lbs. of
compost will cover an acre to about three inches deep. Given that number, I
can see where a decimal might have run away and hid. A forty pound bag
(35-38 quarts) of composted manure covers one square yard of my raised beds
at 3+ inches. 40lbsXCameron's 4840sq.yd./acre=193,600lbs.
Your mileage may vary.
Gareth the ChileKnight